Menu

Social Icons

Friday, November 30, 2012

Have you ever heard of "pork roll"? Me neither. But apparently it's New Jersey's thing – aside from Snooki, jughandles, & being the butt of endless "How I Met Your Mother" jokes – so I decided I should probably give it a try.

I don't know about you, but when I first heard the term "pork roll," I thought of pork buns, à la dim sum. You know, these guys:

Oh, you light, fluffy, Asian bundles of pork-filled bliss! I was just delighted to hear that you were a Garden State staple! Except then I went grocery shopping & saw this on the shelves & got confused:

I felt confident that dim sum deliciousness wouldn't come packaged in cardboard & stored in the frozen foods aisle, so I turned to The Google, & The Google told me that pork roll is, sadly, not synonymous with pork buns. Rather, it is a processed meat product unique to New Jersey. It used to be called "Taylor Ham" until the government passed a law regulating food purity & determined that the item didn't meet the standards of being called "ham." Instead, it became marketed simply under the name pork roll, though a lot of places seem to still call it by the original brand name. My mom used to make me cover my ears when my uncle would talk about how hot dogs were made of "lips & assholes"; based on this bit of Wikipedia trivia, I suspect the same is true of Taylor "ham."

Furthermore, The Google also told me that this Jersey delicacy tastes like bologna-meets-Spam-meets-Canadian-bacon, which led me to believe that I'd probably hate myself for loving it. And hey, if you cut it like this, it's referred to as "Pac-Man bacon"!

So that's fun.

Tonight, Nathan & I went out for dinner in downtown Red Bank, in part because I'm leaving for a week & we wanted to spend some time together, but also because the whole town is dressed up in Christmas lights & feels a wee bit magical. Did you know that this Jew's a sucker for Christmas? It's true. Anyway, we ended up at an old-fashioned, 24-hour diner, the kind in an aluminum trailer-like thing, because that's another thing New Jersey does – diners. Lots of 'em. After confirming with our Jersey-native server that pork roll & Taylor ham were the same thing, I ordered a breakfast sandwich made with it, accompanied by American cheese & scrambled eggs on a hard roll... & then I waited. Nervously. Because did I just order a Spam sandwich? How embarrassing.

When it arrived, I was surprised to find that everything about it looked pretty normal. Curiously normal, in fact.

What a perfectly normal sandwich! This looks like, you know, a sandwich you'd get anywhere else, at any other diner, except with a vaguely strange hybrid meat product as its basis.

And it tasted normal, too. Pork roll is a little saltier than other breakfast meats, I'd say, & at least in this instance, it was significantly less greasy than other breakfast sandwiches I've consumed. I mean, it was still a diner breakfast sandwich, so there was no shortage of guilty disgustingness, but the pork roll didn't necessarily add to or subtract from that. It just tasted like... you know, breakfast meat. Ham or something.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

When Nathan & I got back to New Jersey after a few days in Virginia for Thanksgiving (it was great, by the way, & not as emotional as I'd feared it might be), our cat, Whitmore, was just so excited to see us – like, meowing his little cat heart out & sitting in our laps. He's been weirdly obsessed with me ever since, doing things he never does, like sleeping in the crook of my arm & not destroying our home, both of which are really favorable.

The thing is that, prior to this, Whitmore was fond of acting like a total demon on a regular basis, tearing up our apartment & making me wanting to tear out my hair. Truth be told, I've had a tough time adjusting to being his cat mama, because while he's cute & all, he's no Stringer Bell, & I guess I'm just a crazy hermit cat lady who really misses her deceased feline BFF. But Whitmore's been so nice the last few days that I'm like, "Oh, hey, you're cute, let's keep you!" And this change in his personality got me thinking about housecats & about pets in general & about how they must sometimes feel so damn confused about how they ended up in this person's house.

Think about that.

Like, imagine that some massive creature of another species – an elephant, let's say – "adopts" you (meaning, imagine that an elephant come & takes you away from all the other people you see & hang out with every day) & takes you back to the savanna, where it lives with other elephants & no other people. And the elephant loves you a lot & regularly coos or grunts or whatever at you in some elephant language you don't understand, & it's clear that this elephant think you're its little elephant baby, but still, you know at heart that you aren't an elephant. And where are all the other people & why are you just hanging out in this savanna alone with a bunch of elephants?! So you scream & cry & throw things a lot, & it pisses the elephants off & they sometimes yell at you in their indecipherable language, but they're never, like, mean about it. Just grouchy. But hey, they can deal with it because they kidnapped you & this is what they get.

Except one day, the elephants abandon the savanna, & they don't take you with them. They leave you with a supply of sandwiches & potato chips & other non-elephant food because they're good to you like that, but you don't speak Elephant, so you have no idea where they went or if they're ever coming back. Why have they forsaken you? What will become of you? Will you ever see anyone again? People or elephants? Those crazy kidnapping elephants were, well, crazy kidnappers, but they were nice to you! And what if you run out of sandwiches while they're away?!

But in a few days, just when you're about to reisgn yourself to life & eventual death alone in the savanna, the elephants come back, & they're so happy to see you that they twirl you around & give you more sandwiches & coo/grunt at you in Elephant like they missed you. And you realize that even though you'll probably never see another human being again, these elephants aren't actually so bad, & even if they're crazy kidnappers, they're your crazy kidnappers, goddamnit, & maybe you're not living such a terrible life after all. "Hey, elephants," you think, "I kinda like you guys! There, I said it. Maybe I won't scream & cry all the time anymore, OK?" But you still can't speak Elephant, so you can't tell them this; instead, you cuddle up close to one of those elephants & you live happily ever after, or something.

Here's what I'm trying to say: I think housecats have Stockholm Syndrome.

Monday, November 19, 2012

"It must be great to wear sweatpants all day."Ohhh, you caught me. I wear sweatpants sometimes. OK, a lot of times. In fact, there are many days when I start working as soon as I wake up, then I wear my pajamas until noon & shower on my lunch break. But you know what? Wearing sweatpants all day is not actually great. It makes me feel disgusting, & I work a lot better when I'm wearing real clothes & feeling like a real person. So you'll forgive me if my response to you is that it must be great to have a reason to look nice all day.

"You have time to grab lunch/drink coffee/go on a shopping trip. You work from home!"If you want to hang out on my lunch hour, I can probably make that happen, & I can probablyeven be flexible with the timing of that lunch hour. But after 45 minutes, I'm gonna have to get back to the office ASAP because I work. And also, just like any person who works, I occasionally find myself too busy to take such a long lunch break.In fact, in general, I probably take fewer & shorter lunch breaks than people who work from offices because it's easy to feel like it's not OK to spend an hour in the middle of the work day sitting on my couch & watching last week's Grey's Anatomy.

"You're so lucky you don't have to commute."You're right, & I do feel quite fortunate that I don't have to commute. Because commuting sucks. Then again, you're so lucky that you don't live in your office. Think about it: I am essentially always at work, which means it's damn hard to say, "Sorry, I'm not in the office right now" if a coworker requests something from me – because I'm practically always in my office. So let's call it a draw maybe, OK?

"I hate my coworkers. It must be so nice not to have any."Oooh, this one fries me. If you hate your coworkers so much, I suggest you either find a new job or go into anger management or both. I actually really like my coworkers, & yes, I do have them; we video chat a few times a week & email/IM a few times a minute to ensure that we work well together even while I work from afar. But because I rarely go into the office (it's two hours away), I rarely get the day-to-day interactions with them that make up the typical individual's work experience. I miss them. I miss people. My cat is not exactly a coworker.

"I wish I could watch Netflix while I work!"
I wish I could interact face-to-face withother people while I work, so we're even.

[Laughing at what time I wake up]
"Do you know how early I wake up?" people sometimes say to me with judgmental disdain. Yes, I recognize that teachers get up at, like 5am, as does my military boyfriend. And OK: I usually wake up around 8:15am. And yes, sometimes I even wake up at 9am, launching into those in-my-pajamas-until-lunch days. I know that's a blessing, but let's be clear: I never work any less hard, & I'm often awake until 2am doing it. And also, you wouldn't have to commute, either, if you spent the night at your office every night

"Must be nice."This one feels like a veiled insult. I only say "must be nice" when I think someone is being a lazy and/or indulgent bastard, basically. "You partied all night & slept until 3pm? Must be nice." "You blew $500 on designer clothes & can still pay rent? Must be nice." This statement insinuates that I am somehow a lazy and/or indulgent bastard just because my work takes place in my home & not in a cubicle, as though a communal office setting is the only plausible way in which a person could ever be efficient or hard-working.

"Wow, your boss must really trust you."This one is weird because... yes, of course my boss trusts me. I'm a trustworthy person! Doesn't your boss trust you?! I assume that your boss doesn't look over your shoulder all day from the office; working from home isn't that much different. And because I do social media, much of the work I do is public, for anyone to see & check up on, so it should be fairly evident that I'm not sitting at home all day watching Grey's Anatomy. Except on Netflix while I work, of course.

"I'd love to be able to work from home."Sometimes, guys, I'd love to be able to go into an office every day. I dig camaraderie & being able to drop into other people's cubicles to brainstorm & participating in impromptu birthday celebrations & things like that. Working from home is great, but it can also be incredibly lonely. I understand why people think my job is a thing to envy. I feel very fortunate to be able to work from home, to have a flexible schedule, to note commute, etc., etc., but A) there are downsides, too, & B), at the end of the day, it's still work. I wish people could recognize that

"What do you do all day?"Oh, this one's easy: I work. A lot. What do you do all day?

Friday, November 16, 2012

This year will mark the first time in my whole life, ever, that I spend Thanksgiving away from my family.

My family & me last Thanksgiving on
the beach in South Carolina

For as long as I can remember, we've been spending Thanksgiving at my grandparents' house in Lima, Ohio, with very few exceptions. When I was 11, the year my dad died, we went to my aunt & uncle's house in Dallas instead; I locked myself in the bathroom & wouldn't come to dinner until my grandfather, arguably my favorite family member, persuaded me to. When I was maybe 13, we spent Thanksgiving in Williamsburg, VA, to connect to our pilgrim roots, or something, & I a bad case of the flu kept me from joining the rest of my family in the old-timey festivities. Again, it was my grandfather who stayed with me as everyone else explored a microcosm of colonial America.

And last year. Last year, my grandma was going through a number of medical tests to identify the lump in her lungs. We all knew she'd likely soon be diagnosed with cancer, but I don't think any of us could've imagined that in less than half a year, our mighty matriarch would no longer be with us. She wasn't up to hosting our Thanksgiving get-together at her home last year, so we spent the holiday at my aunt & uncle's beach house in Hilton Head, SC, instead. It was non-traditional a break from the norm, which meant that I loathed it; I spent the whole time moping about & wishing we were doing it the way we always do, back in Ohio. As it turns out, 2010 had marked the final Thanksgiving as we knew it, the final time we'd all gather together to celebrate at my grandma's home in Ohio. We didn't know it at the time, but it was the last time we'd do it the way we always did it, the last time we'd feel normal before a "new normal" set in – a normal that doesn't include either of my grandparents or the rest of us all being together.

A super stellar photo of my mom, aunt,
cousins, & me at my grandparents' house
for Thanksgiving in the 90s

This year, my mom, aunt, uncle, & one of my cousins are going back to Hilton Head; the other cousin is in London for the year, & my other aunt is spending the holiday with her partner's family. Nathan & I couldn't afford the plane tickets south, nor could we bear the 5am flight departure times, so we made alternate plans to spend Thanksgiving in Virginia with our mutual friend Anthony & his mother. I should note that I'm excited for this; I can't wait to see where Nathan grew up, to meet Anthony's mom, to try her renowned cooking, to spend the holiday with two people I love so much.

Still, when I think of the Thanksgivings I grew up with, back in Ohio with my family all alive & in the same place, I can't help but feel like a chapter has closed – like part of my heart is gone. All those things I took for granted, those moment we'll never see again: The smell of my grandmother's house when we arrived & she had soup simmering on the stove, the way we'd all cram onto her scratchy L-shaped couch to watch whatever movie we could all agree upon, the Thanksgiving staples we ate every year, like the rutabagas we all hated & my Aunt Sarah's premade rolls we all loved. Sharing the fold-out couch with my cousin Grace, wrapping presents in the basement with Emily, arranging & rearranging our brightly colored gifts to one another in front of the fireplace to be opened the night after Thanksgiving. The bagels my grandma pre-toasted & left in a basket on the kitchen table so that no matter when we woke up, we'd have something to eat for breakfast. Peeling the potatoes with my cousins & plopping the naked spuds into a massive pot of water. Playing our traditional post-Thanksgiving-dinner Scrabble game, spending hours reading books & magazines on the living room couch while others watched football or cooked or kibbitzed.

Thinking about them now, it's like I can feel them, all those times I'll never get back. I miss my grandmother so much – every single day, multiple times a day. Before her diagnosis & her incredibly fast decline, she was so healthy that I almost literally never thought about what our lives would be like without her. Without her here, I fear we won't gather like that anymore, won't make the effort to spend time together, won't have that one time a year when we belong to one another. I feel my grandmother's absence regularly – when I want to call her & have to remind myself that I can't, when I see something she'd like & wish I could tell her about it, when I look at her painting on our bedroom wall & remember that she's gone – but this Thanksgiving will mark the first time I will be without her, without all of them, engaging in new traditions & tucking the old ones away into the corners of my mind.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

It was a really, really bad day to forget my headphones.

I own about three pairs of headphones, & I almost always have one of them with me. As someone who works from home – which often means working from coffeeshops – I need them in order to take conference calls in crowded, noisy venues, & of course, they're great for blocking out the world around me & losing myself in Billy Joel while I work. Or, um, something cooler. (What are the kids listening to these days, anyway?)

When I got to Starbucks this afternoon, the only seat left in the place was at a shared seating area, squished between a woman in her 30s working on a Macbook & two women in their 50s taking up much more space than they required. What stood out about them was that one of the women appeared to have brought her own cutlery & a China plate from home & was eating an orange with a fork while snacking from a plastic party tray of dried apricots. While I've been known to sneak outside food into Starbucks (& the movies & basically anywhere else), there's something distinctly brazen about setting up your own meal & digging in for everyone to see. She was also drinking an eggnog latte, which, she announced loudly – & repeatedly – was "absolute rubbish."

It gets weirder. I briefly considered the idea that these women – or at least one of them, the more annoying of the two – might've had some sort of developmental delay (which would've absolutely kept me from writing this post, let's be clear), but it became pretty clear that they were just... weird. The lady with the orange switched back & forth between a normal voice & a squeaky, high-pitched baby voice, favoring the latter but using the former just enough to sound like a normal person every so often. They talked & talked, in a manner of conversation I can scarcely think to describe in writing, though I'm sure I could muster a good imitation for you. I want you to imagine, for example, a grown woman speaking in a squeaky baby voice saying things like, "You're so fannnncy, always going to fancy places like the Caribbean & leaving wittle old me at home!" & "I want the gweeeeen juice, but I already dwank a diffff'went juice. What should I dooo?" At some point, they began to discuss the possibility that Eggnog Orange Lady's friend had mice in her apartment; the friend said she'd round up all the mice & drop them off at a Chinese restaurant (racist much?), to which Eggnog Orange Lady exclaimed, "Nooo! Not the wittle meecers! We don't eat meecers!"

At one point, Eggnog Orange Lady took the plastic wrapping off of her apricot container & asked Mouse Meecers Lady to wear it as a crown. Meecers Lady put it on her head as though it were a pair of headphones, which made Eggnog Orange Lady positively gleeful with laughter. Very loud laughter. Baby-voiced laughter, if such a thing is possible.

In between these totally bizarre, ear-splitting interactions, the two reverted to totally normal voices & conversations, including a mean-spirited one about what a bitch one of Eggnog Orange Lady's coworkers is – like I said, enough to let me know that they were, in fact, "all there" & that they were just the most annoying. When Meecers Lady said she had to get going, Eggnog Orange Lady screeched (in baby voice, of course), "Noooo! No, no, NO! Stay here with meeeee!" as though she were a child being left at daycare.

Throughout it all, try as I might (& I did, desperately), I was helpless to block them out. I even went back out to my car to search desperately for a pair of headphones that might silence the unending cacophony of weirdness, to no avail.

My frustration just miiiight have been evident, because as she got up to leave, Macbook Girl turned to me & said, just out of earshot of our two fellow diners, "I wish I had another pair of headphones. I'd totally leave them for you."

Saturday, November 10, 2012

This video appeared today on my friend Sammi's Facebook wall, courtesy of her boyfriend, Dave, who wrote with it, simply, "Gettin' in the mood." Sammi tagged me when she commented on it, "First. I am so happy about this. Kate, have you seen this? Second. Turkey leg microphone. Third...why is that guy the only adult? Sketch."

That was, of course, all it took to entice me to watch.

In addition to Sammi's astute observations, I have a lot of thoughts about this video:

Does this young musician know when Thanksgiving is? At the beginning of the video, she crosses November 28th off the calendar; this year, Thanksgiving is November 22nd.* And yes, the video was uploaded this year.

"Fat Usher," as one kind YouTube commenter (aptly) dubs him, sings, "April was Easter & the Fourth of July." This is another critical calendrical error. Probably a bigger one.

Fat Usher makes the creepiest appearance of all time, by popping up from the bottom of the screen during what appears to be a Thanksgiving dinner hosted entirely by tweens.

I think this is stuffing's first appearance in a music video, ever.

Nicole Westbrook is far too young to Dance Until Dawn.

Mashed potatoes, AY!

*I originally listed Thanksgiving as being on the 24th. Because holidays without exact days are confusing, Nicole, I'll give you that.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Dear everywhere else: Next time you refer to the Midwest as "flyover states," Ohio & I will thank you to remember this evening.

I did not, of course, vote in Ohio today. I voted in New Jersey, & my boyfriend, who is a Virginian, voted in New Hampshire. Tonight, we were thrilled to see all four of our beloved states go blue. In fact, for the first time since moving to the Garden State, I found myself speaking the phrase "Jersey Strong" & really meaning it. Maybe tonight was what I needed to start feeling like a New Jerseyan – or maybe it was all I needed to remind me that I will always be an Ohioan. But whatever I am, I am an American, & I could not be more proud to have cast my vote for President Barack Obama.

My voting today experience was weird & unconventional. Not only did I not wait in line, I was, at one point, literally the only voter in the building. The seven polling staffers seemed confused & unprepared; one of them literally yelled at me when my cardigan briefly pulled open to reveal my Obama tee underneath. (I didn't realize it was illegal!) I cast my vote on a poster-sized touch-screen in one of only two voting booths in my polling place, & I listened to an old man answer the question "Where do you live?" with "I live where I live!" I was not given an "I voted" sticker, as is customary in my Buckeye State, & was instead told, "We'll have those next year," which is not a helpful answer. But I voted, & I didn't have to wait to vote, & I got to vote at the Jersey Shore, where so, so many of my neighbors are still reeling from the storm that ravaged this area just a week ago. I am lucky, & I don't need a sticker to remind me of that.

I hardly realized I was holding my breath tonight when I watched the results roll in, but every time a progressive candidate's win was announced, I found myself breathing a bit easier. Claire
McCaskill! Elizabeth Warren! Kirsten Gilibrand! Tammy Duckworth! Lois
Frankel! Maggie Hassan! That's what we ladies like to call "shutting the
whole thing down," y'all. And Ohio showed its love for the divine Sherrod Brown, & all of the terrible rape apologists went down in flames, & the Kennedys made their grand comeback & marriage equality made major strides, & when Ohio went blue, immediately followed by the announcement of Barack Obama's win, I found myself laughing & crying at the same time, sniffling & snorting & smiling all at once. We did this. We did it!

For the first time, I didn't feel like I needed to respond to any of the haters on Facebook. All I felt was relief & joy, a wavering faith restored, the return of a deep-seated hope that never really left but sure did worry there for a minute."We've
been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But
in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything
false about hope." HAPPY FOUR-MORE-YEARS-DAY, America!

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Four years ago, my friends & I took this photo at the end of a very, very happy evening in Washington, D.C. We'd been watching the election results roll in for hours, analyzing blog posts & news stories & social media as we tried desperately to determine where the race was headed. When Senator Barack Obama was announced as our next president, our reactions were mixed – but they were all reactions based in joy. There was shouting & laughing & crying & comically cartoonish jaw-dropping. Yes, we did.

That night, when I set out in the dark to make the walk home from Dupont Circle to Cleveland Park, there was extra bounce in my step & a giant smile on my face. Though I made much of the two-mile walk by myself, I never felt feel lonely or alone; in fact, the trek was a celebration in itself! Cars honked at one another as they drove by, & pedestrians blew party horns & whooped & hollered as they walked, waving & shouting at complete strangers. Someone from another country – Denmark, I think? – yelled at me from across the Klingle Valley bridge, "We're so proud of your country! You guys made the right choice!"

Monday, November 5, 2012

Jonah & Debra's wedding was meant to be in Old Bridge, N.J., which is about 25 minutes from Nathan's & my apartment. What a relief, we said beforehand, to be invited to a wedding so close to home, one we wouldn't need to travel for! What a rarity! We invited a friend to stay with us the night of the rehearsal dinner, & we planned a bagel brunch at our apartment for out-of-town pals the morning of the wedding so we could all catch up.

And then there was a hurricane that destroyed the Jersey Shore, leaving Jonah & Debra's wedding venue & hotel without power, among other issues. Early Thursday morning, I got a text:

We are considering moving wedding to DC. Not sure if you could join but would work with you on getting a ride if you would be willing. I know it is a ton to ask.

We probably can't come, I said. Of course we couldn't come... right?! More than half of the Garden State was without power, & who knew what lay beyond Red Bank's borders! Fearing downed trees, gas shortages, & road closures, we doubted we could make the four-hour drive to the District. And besides, what if Nathan was called back to work to help restore the Coast Guard Base after the flooding it suffered in the storm? But when his boss called to tell him not to expect to return to work until Monday, we decided we'd try.

Save a few back-road detours along the way, we made it to D.C. with almost no problems – & we weren't the only ones. More than 200 people made it to the change of venue, & when we got there, we found a truly fantastic & unbelievably pulled-together replacement wedding. A few bridesmaids got stuck in Manhattan without gas – so Debra sent a friend to pick them up. Another bridesmaid couldn't reroute her flight from Israel to D.C. – so another guest drove to LaGuardia to pick her up & drive her down to the new location. With transit at a standstill, a few attendees couldn't make it out of the city – so they rented a shuttle to pick them all up & bring them to D.C. The band was shuttled in from flooded Queens; Macy's corporate headquarters sent a store manager with a building key to retrieve Debra's bridal gown from a mall that lost power. A lot of people made a lot of effort to get to this wedding, & the results were... God, I don't even know if I have a word for the results.

There was no bridezilla to be found at this wedding, no arguing or agonizing or stressing over the sort of last-minute details & minutiae typical of weddings long in the planning process. This was a wedding re-planned in 48 hours, a wedding that went without unnecessary decorum like fancy welcome bags for hotel guests & flowers decorating the aisles. This was a wedding intended to be grandiose & beautiful that was, due to circumstances, not the former but was absolutely the latter – because it was focused solely on love & friendship & creating a day that honored both. Together, with some of my favorite people in the world, honoring two friends who are so wildly in love that even a superstorm could not suppress their joy, we laughed & we cried & we sang & we danced & we celebrated, celebrated, celebrated, proving that there are some things Mother Nature can't control – like love, friendship, & stubborn, determined Jews. And oh, yeah: Their story made the New York Times!

Mazel tov, Jonah & Debra, & may you weather every storm together with as much grace & aplomb you did this one. We love you!

Sunday, November 4, 2012

I wondered whether it was insensitive of me to write a post like this while so many in the tri-state area are still without power & heat & basics like food & water, but I ultimately decided that this post is less about Hurricane Sandy, specifically, & more about some of the things I rediscovered/found new appreciation for when forced to look at life differently for a brief period of time.

I feel, of course, beyond fortunate to have been spared from the worst of this storm, & my heart (& wallet) goes out to those who are still suffering its impact. But in expressing my appreciation for my safety, I figured it couldn't hurt to also show some gratitude to a few of the companies whose products got me through our
three days sans power in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy!

Yankee CandleExpensive? Lord, yes. But when you're planning for seven to 10 days without electricity, long-burning candles are a must, & Yankee Candle is simply the best. Also, the smelliest - & I mean that in a loving way. When stocking up before the storm, we snagged a Cinnamon & Spice candle for $15, which initially felt like a lot but was absolutely worth it when we found ourselves sitting in total darkness. Approximate burn time: 35-45 hours.

Target LeggingsI confess that I sometimes wear leggings as pants when I pair them with a shirt or tunic long enough to cover my bum, but I'm still embarrassed that I do this because A) I am too fat for it, B) I am too old fir it, & C) leggings are not pants. But when you've got nowhere to go & nobody to see? It should go without saying that leggings are an absolutely suitable – & infinitely comfortable – substitution for pants.

Jennifer WeinerI have been embarrassingly terrible at reading books this year. In fact, I can think of only, like, four that I've completed in 2012 because my Internet habit is, how you say, out of control. With no Internet access, though, I pulled a few books off the shelf & got down to business. On Tuesday, I blew through this chick lit author's 2011 novel, Then Came You. It was a perfectly cozy way to spend an Internet-free fall day – & I've committed to doing it more often, even without a storm to force me to.

GoPicnicI bought six of these ready-to-eat boxed meals from Target before the storm hit, & what a relief they were when I got tired of snacking on other non-refrigerated things like, um, Pop-Tarts® & Halloween candy. While I found the plantain-chips-&-black-bean-dip variety to be truly disgusting, the others kept me sated & at least feeling like I tried to be sort of healthy in a world without refrigeration.

Hasbro®A
few weeks ago, I picked up a Deluxe Scrabble board as a birthday gift
to Nathan, the kind on a rotator with grooves to keep played tiles in
place. Since then, we've played a handful of games (only one of which
he's won!), but when the power went out, candlelight Scrabble seemed
like the perfect solution to our technology-free boredom. I still won,
by the way. Schwinggggg.

Seriously, these four things saved my Sandy experience. I also: talked to Nathan a lot, drank a significant amount of Coors Light (it was going to go bad!), took the second-coldest shower of my life, slept in until as late as my body wanted to, & played with my cat. How do you stay sane/keep busy when the power goes out?

Thursday, November 1, 2012

In case you didn't hear, there was a hurricane. A big one. It made landfall just a couple hours south of where we're living on the Jersey coast, devastating the entire area &, I'm told, as far west as Cleveland & as far north as Toronto. We stocked up on food & water & alcohol, fully preparing to lose power. We took showered late & filled our (leaky) bathtub with water. We watched everything on our DVR assuming we would soon not be able to watch anything at all.

Our power flickered a few times, went out & then came back, & finally bit it for good (or at least for the duration of the storm) around 4pm on Monday evening, right before Sandy made her grand appearance. Nathan of course fell asleep at 8pm, just as things got crazy bad, so I stayed up with the cat until about 10:30, just sitting in the dark & shaking & hyperventilating & hoping for the best. There is absolutely no hyperbole involved when I tell you that I've never been so scared in my life.

When we woke up on Tuesday morning, all was quiet. Like, eerily quiet. When you fall asleep to the sound of winds as loud as freight trains & jet packs, anything quieter than that feels like both a relief & a concern. It looked safe outside, though, so we walked downtown to see what the damage looked like. Though it definitely looked like a storm had passed through, Red Bank seems to have escaped any severe damage.

Our backyard sits on the Navesink River, where a number of small docks were severely damaged in the storm. The worst one is on the left, crumpled like a... really crappy nautical accordion. The one on the right seemed fine except for that newly created drawbridge that, you know, doesn't go down.

There was a downed tree in our backyard, along with some pieces-parts from aforementioned docks. The fence you see was significantly damaged, & the matching one on the other side of the yard disappeared completely, leaving an open pathway from our backyard to the hotel next door.

These trees have definitely seen better days.

Part of this nearby boathouse toppled onto some of the boats nearby. I don't even know what kind of boats these are because I am an indoor kid. Kayaks, maybe? Whatever they are, I think they were originally stored in a boat rack of some sort, which was in pieces a few feet away.

Across the street, a billboard of some sort blew across the top of an apartment building, & the wind shredded it to pieces. At the time of this photo, its splintered wooden spine dangled precariously over people's decks.

It wasn't just the billboard. Some other things were in places where they didn't belong, too.

Of course, nothing downtown was open yesterday, as nobody had power. A few places had taken pre-storm precautions & boarded or taped their windows, but there was very little visible damage to any of the storefronts.

This was actually the only instance of broken glass that we saw, where the large window of an empty storefront shattered all over the sidewalk. Weirdly, everything around it was intact. I guess nature knows no order.

Some of the worst damage we saw was on the road outside our apartment building , which was closed around a downed power line &... our neighbor's roof, which blew straight off their condo & into the street, atop a downed power line. See that picket fence on the left-hand side? Our cars are back there, & that's a dead-end road.

We initially thought our cars would be trapped back there until the mess was cleaned up, but glory, hallelujah! We discovered a secret passageway of sorts from a nearby business's parking lot out to the street. Upon realizing this, we set out for an ill-fated drive north to see if the local mall was open (um, it wasn't), in which we got stuck in mad amounts of traffic due to downed trees & literally hundreds of cars lined up on the highway waiting for gas at the few open stations. People lined up on foot, too, & while we were stuck, I of course snapped a few photos.

Despite our power company's estimated seven- to 10-day restoration timetable, our lights turned back on yesterday evening - & our heat & hot water came back with them. We're just about back to normal. But here's a little twist: Nathan & I were supposed to attend the wedding of one of my very best friends in Iselin, N.J., on Saturday, but because of storm damage, it's been moved... to Washington, D.C. In the wake of widespread disaster, I have no idea if we'll be able to make it there. Are the roads open? Are there enough gas stations operating along the way? Beats me, but we're going to try.